Limits to Books in Prison Draw Creative Foes

Denis MacShane, who spent three weeks in Belmarsh prison, had limited access to books there.

Carl Court / Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

By STEPHEN CASTLE

July 1, 2014

LONDON — Jailed for making false expense claims, Denis MacShane, a former British lawmaker, suffered another blow when he arrived last December at Belmarsh prison, a grim penitentiary in southeast London, and staff members confiscated the bag of books he had brought.

Mr. Grayling is Britain’s secretary of state for justice, and last November, his department tightened the rules on privileges granted to inmates. One of the changes was to restrict the flow of books into prisons, with a ban on packages of books brought or sent by friends and relatives. Mr. MacShane’s case suggests that some guards have interpreted the policy as a broader ban, though the Ministry of Justice says books should be confiscated only on admission for logistical reasons or if the books are considered inappropriate.

Either way, the effect is to move toward a system under which prisoners must borrow books from prison libraries or earn the right to buy them through good behavior.

The debate over access to literature in prison has put Mr. Grayling at the center of an acrimonious dispute over crime and punishment, rehabilitation and whether receiving books is a right or a privilege for a prisoner.

It has also made him some very creative enemies. Novelists, including Kathy Lette and Margaret Drabble, are threatening to name some of their most villainous and unfortunate fictional characters after Mr. Grayling.

Ms. Lette said her coming novel, “Courting Trouble,” will feature a corrupt lawyer named Chris Grayling who ends up in a prison where he is deprived of reading matter and goes insane.

“For Britain to be punishing people by starving them of literature is cruel and unusual punishment,” Ms. Lette said as she took part in a protest last month outside the prime minister’s office. “We are going to impale him on the end of our pens. Poetic justice is true justice.”

Opponents of the policy are also planning more conventional legal challenges. Samuel Genen, a lawyer representing a prisoner he says was affected by the change, said he planned to take a case to court in September or October to challenge the revised prison rules.

Andrew Neilson, campaigns director of the Howard League for Penal Reform, cited literature going back centuries that was written by prisoners either in their cells or after being released, including John Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress” and Oscar Wilde’s “Ballad of Reading Gaol.”

“There is a grand tradition of books and prison going together,” said Mr. Neilson, who added that Britons generally see self-education and the opportunity to read as important even for those who have committed serious crimes. “We may not like prisoners, but the idea that they should not have books is ridiculous,” he said.

The Ministry of Justice says prisoners need incentives as part of their rehabilitation and should earn privileges, including the right to buy objects from the outside world. Preventing parcels from being sent in gives prison authorities more control.

“Good behavior is incentivized, and bad behavior is challenged with loss of incentives,” the government guidance document says.

The government also argues that, when items are sent into jails, scarce resources are devoted to searching them for drugs or weapons. Mr. Grayling, who is regarded as one of the government’s most combative politicians, declined to be interviewed.

In a statement, the prison minister, Jeremy Wright, said that “prisoners’ access to reading material is not being curtailed.”

“All prisoners have access to the library regardless of where they are being held,” he said, adding, “What is right is that we limit the number of parcels coming in to the prison to ensure safety and to prevent contraband being smuggled in.”

But critics are not convinced. More than 40 well-known figures from the artistic world, including the poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, have signed a letter of protest. Ms. Drabble said that, while many prisoners would not read literature, some would, and that reading was an important element of rehabilitation.

“It is such a weird own goal,” she said of Mr. Grayling’s policy. Halfway through writing her new novel, tentatively titled “Death by Fire,” Ms. Drabble said she had ample time to create a character called Chris Grayling, adding that perhaps “he could die in the fire.”

The playwright David Hare said that reading and access to literature “is a right, not a privilege,” and the writer A. L. Kennedy said that books are “a humanizing and creative influence.”

“This is Boko Haram, Grayling style,” Ms. Kennedy said in emailed comments, referring to the militant Islamist group that denies Western education to girls. “No education for unsuitable candidates, no money to search parcels, no mental release or privacy for prisoners confined in a dangerous and counterproductive environment.”

“We’re not a bunch of poorly informed luvvies who think it would be just darling if muggers read Keats,” Ms. Kennedy said. “Many writers spend a great deal of time in marginal communities and prisons — a good deal more time than the politicians — and no one makes things pretty for us. We see what works and what doesn’t.”

Some support for Mr. Grayling has come from Peter McParlin, chairman of the Prison Officers’ Association, who said that the minister had been “unfairly treated by the liberal elite” and that searching parcels took staff time. But he suggested that even his sympathy was limited. The government’s budget cuts had destroyed its stated objective of achieving a “rehabilitation revolution,” which he said was a “nonstarter.”

“It’s wonderful to be able to read a book,” Mr. McParlin added, “but prisoners need to be able to do that knowing they are not going to be assaulted. There are 40 prisoner-on-prisoner assaults every day.”

Critics contend that Mr. Grayling’s initiative was inspired by a desire to appeal to a segment of his Conservative Party that wants tough law and order policies.

Mr. MacShane, who was released in February, said he was eventually reunited with his books, which included a French novel and a history of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, when he transferred to another jail, Brixton, after about three weeks in Belmarsh.

But Mr. MacShane says he never got the chance to visit the library in Belmarsh because prison officers have to escort inmates and staffing was stretched. So his choice of reading was limited to a handful of books in the induction wing: sports biographies, a book by the television presenter Jeremy Clarkson and a crime thriller by Elizabeth George.

He took the thriller only to find that the last 40 pages had been ripped out. “I never found out whodunit,” Mr. MacShane said.